M3GAN (2022) (1 Viewer)

[WillG]

Insanely high Rotten Tomatoes for a horror film. 98% with 42 reviews.

Hmm, I remember thinking when seeing the trailer “here’s an original idea” guess people are liking it though

 

[benbess]

 

[benbess]

There's a new open source AI chatbot that has abilities that are impressive compared to what's come before. It's gotten a lot of attention, including in a recent article in the New York Times:

A New Area of A.I. Booms, Even Amid the Tech Gloom

An investment frenzy over “generative artificial intelligence” has gripped Silicon Valley, as tools that generate text, images and sounds in response to short prompts seize the imagination.

www.nytimes.com

Anyway, some of this seems like it's somewhat closer than I would have thought just a few days ago.

I asked the AI chat bot to write a poem about the movie....

 

[benbess]

‘M3GAN’ Is a Horror Film for the TikTok Generation

Some older fans balk at the Blumhouse movie's PG-13 rating or its meme-able moments, but it's time for younger generations to have a turn in crafting their nightmares.

www.hollywoodreporter.com

 

[Alex...]

'M3GAN' Slays First Weekend With $45 Million at the Global Box Office

 

[Alex...]

Screenwriter Says Original Script “Was Way Gorier” & Unrated Version “Is On The Books”​

‘M3GAN’ Screenwriter Says Original Script “Was Way Gorier” & Unrated Version “Is On The Books”

M3GAN is slaying at the box office and there are already plans for a sequel. Screenwriter Akela Cooper opened up about writing the script for the horror film and revealed that it was originally &#8…

deadline.com

 

[Robert Crawford]

Screenwriter Says Original Script “Was Way Gorier” & Unrated Version “Is On The Books”​

‘M3GAN’ Screenwriter Says Original Script “Was Way Gorier” & Unrated Version “Is On The Books”

M3GAN is slaying at the box office and there are already plans for a sequel. Screenwriter Akela Cooper opened up about writing the script for the horror film and revealed that it was originally &#8…

deadline.com

I wouldn’t have guessed that a sequel is coming.

 

[Tino]

I thought it was ok. Definitely a bit overrated.

Not scary at all. Just entertaining enough for a couple of hours.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I enjoyed it. It felt of the same satirical vein as Robocop but aimed at a slightly younger audience and with the area of concern being AI rather than crime. It had modest aims but I feel it succeeded in what it set out to do. Minus credits it’s in that 90 minute range which is about right - every time I started to wonder if it was going to drag out a plot element too long, it moved on to the next thing. I’d call it a solid b-movie.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

I am utterly dumbfounded how this movie got a RT score that high. There's not one moment of suspense or anything scary in it and all the characters (even the little kid who is an orphan) are so horrible that you simply want the robot to kill them and then when she does kill people, it's not violent or cool. Even when I don't agree with the critical consensus on a movie, I can generally see what/why they liked the movie but in the case of this, I feel like I saw an entirely different picture.

Even crazier is that the writer's last movie (Malignant) was great and that had a rockier critical reception.

I thought "Malignant" was wholly terrible. As I said in my review: "Boring until it becomes stupid, the movie wastes 111 minutes of screen time."

"M3GAN" isn't great but it's a heckuva lot better than "Malignant"!

 

[TravisR]

"M3GAN" isn't great but it's a heckuva lot better than "Malignant"!

Malignant is very darkly funny and it also manages to create suspense at some points. Those are two things that Megan doesn't come close to achieving.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Malignant is very darkly funny and it also manages to create suspense at some points. Those are two things that Megan doesn't come close to achieving.

Oh, I laughed during "Malignant".

But not because of anything the filmmakers intended. I laughed because it was so effin' stupid.

Like I said, I find it slow and boring before it becomes ridiculous and eye-rolling.

"M3GAN" is no classic but it generally does what it sets out to do.

Unless "offer an unwatchably moronic movie" was what "Malignant" set out to do, it failed.

 

[Malcolm R]

Loved Malignant. No interest in this film, though with James Wan involved I'll likely see it at some point when it's streaming at no extra charge.

 

[Jason_V]

I knew what kind of movie I was going to get with M3gan before I sat in my seat last night. What I didn't expect was liking it as much as I did. It has LOL moments, a teeny tiny amount of blood, some action and takes place in a locale I'm realizing lately I desperately miss.

It's not scary in a typical horror movie way; rather, I found the implications for our connected devices to be the scary part.

What I didn't like about the movie was the experience. The number of 13-year-old and younger kids in the theater was mind boggling. Up, down, up, down, phones, talking, running up and down the stairs, moving seats...oh, and they acted like they'd never heard the one "F" word in the entire movie. If I don't see these kinds of movies on opening weekend preview night, I think I need to avoid them. I'm an old, crotchety grandpa apparently.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I saw a fairly deserted Monday night showing and there were about half a dozen teenage girls in the audience who had apparently never seen a film like this before - their almost ludicrous reactions added another level of fun to the proceedings for me, but there’s a really fine line between when that sort of thing helps vs just gets in the way.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

I saw a fairly deserted Monday night showing and there were about half a dozen teenage girls in the audience who had apparently never seen a film like this before - their almost ludicrous reactions added another level of fun to the proceedings for me, but there’s a really fine line between when that sort of thing helps vs just gets in the way.

Sometimes I think I shouldn't review horror movies anymore because horror might be best appreciated by the young who've not seen all the tricks of the trade.

Jump scares were once novel for us, too!

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Meant to see this in theaters, didn't get around to it, so I ended up biting the bullet and paying the "Theater at Home" surcharge, which in upstate New York isn't actually that much more than a movie ticket.

I don't care how advanced and cutting edge it's supposed to be, that's obviously an actor in a mask and not a robot. Maybe I'm crazy but that's where the trailer lost me.

I thought they did a good job of mixing techniques, such that I wasn't always entirely certain how M3GAN was being achieved at any given moment. There are definitely moments where it's clear that it's a child wearing an animatronic mask, but there are also moments that would be impossible for a real person to pull off.

I appreciated too how M3GAN got less stiff and synthetic-feeling as the movie went on and her self-optimization continued.

I enjoyed this movie but I don't think it is nearly as good as some of the reviews were making it out to be. It took a while for the story to get going and when it did the movie was more funny than scary. This movie could have also been made as a sci-fi film since it has a lot to do with AI gone bad.

Yeah, it worked for me as a black comedy more than a horror film. But I don't think the writer or the director were taking themselves too seriously here.

It's basically a Gen Z Child's Play, but instead of relying on evil magic it's shortsighted programming.

One amusing line for me early in the movie is from a commercial for a different kind of robot pet, and the ad man says, after showing a family grieving at their dog's grave: "Buy a pet that lives longer than you do!" This reminded me a bit of the fake ads in the original Robocop from 1987, but they mostly lacked the edge of that movie's dystopian ads.

I thought that ad definitely set the tone for the movie. The whole plot is basically built on cynical capitalism. It's why Gemma foists her prototype on her grieving niece, and it's why the corporation she works for rushes out the reveal on a timetable that has more to do with investor expectations that the steady and responsible development of this emerging technology.

I enjoyed it. It felt of the same satirical vein as Robocop but aimed at a slightly younger audience and with the area of concern being AI rather than crime. It had modest aims but I feel it succeeded in what it set out to do. Minus credits it’s in that 90 minute range which is about right - every time I started to wonder if it was going to drag out a plot element too long, it moved on to the next thing. I’d call it a solid b-movie.

That about sums it up for me, too. I liked that you could understand M3GAN's logic, and how each new depravity was an extension of the justification for the previous depravity.

Oh, I laughed during "Malignant".

But not because of anything the filmmakers intended. I laughed because it was so effin' stupid.

I think the filmmakers of Malignant definitely knew that the concept was bonkers stupid. And they invited the audience to take the leap with them, not unlike this movie. I liked Malignant better just because the concept driving it was even wilder and off the wall.

It's not scary in a typical horror movie way; rather, I found the implications for our connected devices to be the scary part.

The most chilling shot of the movie, arguably, is the way the camera lingers on her smart device on her kitchen counter as it wakes up after the police have left. In the real world, AI is evolving faster than our ability to understand it, and the cloud makes it pretty much impossible to contain.

I'd say that it would have been better for humanity if AI had been perfected before the Internet came along, but I don't know that you could get AI like we have today without the internet. It takes a massive amount of data to get to something like ChatGPT or Midjourney, and without the Internet I don't think any one siloed local database would have been enough to get the technology there.

 

[Jason_V]

The most chilling shot of the movie, arguably, is the way the camera lingers on her smart device on her kitchen counter as it wakes up after the police have left. In the real world, AI is evolving faster than our ability to understand it, and the cloud makes it pretty much impossible to contain.

100%. Sure, a doll that is nearly indestructible is scary. The way corporate America is portrayed is scary. But smart devices/targeted promotions based on liked content are now part of our everyday life, for better or worse. Siri, Alexa, Facebook ads, etc...it's here. All the information these companies collect is "sitting" somewhere, just waiting for something/someone more powerful to assimilate and use it against us.

Sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but we know it can happen in our 2023 world.

 

[benbess]

Agree with how things in 2023 seem much closer to the AI Android future than we realized, esp. because of this new open source AI that you can access without cost. Substantially more advanced versions of AI chatbots, according to someone in the field I talked with, already exist, but are kept from the public for now. Combine that with an android/robot body and we're closer to what Asimov envisioned, or M3GAN envisions, than I could have imagined a few months ago.

The new open source chatbot gpt can be creepy-good in the way it can do some things. I gave it detailed directions to write a poem about the movie Apocalypse Now. What it came up with needed a few improvements in terms of word use and rhymes, but what's below is I think about 80% the AI and only 20% me. I couldn't have come up with something like this on my own....


Apocalypse Now, a film so grand,
A journey through the horrors of war's hand.
Released in 1979, a time to remember,
This film's story, a tale as searing as embers.

Based on Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad,
A tale about imperialism that’s rather sad
Captain Willard, played by Martin Sheen,
On a mission to find and terminate, a man so keen.

Marlon Brando as Kurtz, a soldier lost in the fray,
His performance does insanity convey.
"The horror. The horror," Kurtz exclaims,
As he descends into madness, his mind in flames.

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, a man of great vision,
This film's impact was a lasting incision.
Cinematography by Vittorio Storaro,
Capturing beauty and horror, a true maestro.

Through jungle and chaos, Willard fights his way,
Encountering tragedy along the way.
Apocalypse Now, a tale of despair,
A descent into darkness, beyond compare.

But through it all, a glimmer of hope,
A masterpiece that shows us how we might cope.
The film was the winner of the Palme d'Or
Apocalypse Now is cinema that many still adore

 

[Kent K H]

Oh, I laughed during "Malignant".

But not because of anything the filmmakers intended. I laughed because it was so effin' stupid.

The stilted performances, the weird editing that doesn’t effectively show time passage and makes things seem like they’re almost happening in a dream state, the mismatched interiors and exteriors, the cops both jumping to strange conclusions and stating the obvious as though it’s a monumental reveal and the nutty plot… Malignant uses the tropes - and shall we say, ‘technical limitations’ - of Italian horror, right down to the black-gloved killer and mixes them with some 80s-style Hennenlotter body horror and I couldn’t have loved it more. But don’t think for a minute that a single frame of it isn’t completely on purpose.

Anyway, I slept on Megan because of the trailers. Something about it wasn’t grabbing me. I finally went and saw it last night and was shocked how much I enjoyed it given every single plot point is completely predictable down the line, all the way to the Aliens riff at the end. It doesn’t break any new ground, but I chuckled throughout and hope that the kids in the audience liked it enough to get hooked.